Co-Managed IT — Phoenix Accounting Firms

Co-Managed IT for Accounting Firms in Phoenix, Arizona

Mid-sized Phoenix CPA firms with an in-house IT person (or a designated data security coordinator who's also doing operations) usually don't need another full MSP — they need backup. After-hours and busy-season coverage, the security stack and WISP framework, project capacity, vendor escalation with CCH / UltraTax / Rightworks, and the tools they'd never get approved on their own: that's co-managed IT.

We sit alongside your in-house lead, run SOC + EDR + backup + M365 + firewall + hosted-environment integration on shared documentation, take after-hours and PTO coverage, absorb the project queue your IT person keeps deferring, and own the WISP artifact pack. The firm keeps institutional knowledge in-house; we keep the lights on and the Pub 4557 / Safeguards Rule posture defensible.

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Why It Matters

Why Co-Managed IT Matters for Accounting Firms in Phoenix

Your IT person can't cover busy season alone

A Phoenix CPA firm with one in-house IT person has 40 hours of coverage and 128 hours of busy-season risk every week from January through April 15. Co-managed gives you the rest of the week and the season.

Security tooling is expensive at one-firm scale

Managed EDR, 24/7 SOC, immutable backup, SIEM, vulnerability management, security awareness, DMARC tooling — at single-firm pricing, it's six figures. We deliver it at MSP scale and the firm pays the share.

Projects stall when one person owns everything

The hosted-tax cutover, the firewall refresh, the M365 hardening, the office move — they all wait in line behind tickets and partner phone calls. Co-managed gives the firm parallel project capacity without hiring.

WISP and § 314 reporting are real work

The annual risk assessment, the qualified-individual report, the documented restore tests, the IR tabletop — these are pieces an in-house IT person frequently doesn't have time to keep current. Co-managed owns them.

What's Included

Co-Managed IT Scope for Phoenix Accounting Firms

Shared service desk

Your team handles tier 1 (and the partner relationships); we handle overflow, after-hours, and escalations. One ticketing system, shared visibility, no duplicated work.

24/7 monitoring and EDR

Managed EDR on every endpoint and server, SOC-monitored 24/7, with alerts routed to both your team and ours. Your IT person isn't paged at 2 a.m. for things our SOC can handle.

Backup and DR operations

Immutable backup platform, documented quarterly restore tests, and DR runbook ownership — your team validates, we operate.

Microsoft 365 and identity

Tenant administration, conditional access, DLP with tax-data classifiers, sensitivity labels, retention, eDiscovery — managed jointly. Your team sets policy with the partners; we run the controls.

Hosted-tax-env vendor management

We carry the Rightworks / Cetrom / Swizznet relationship for case escalation, change windows, and incident coordination — your IT person doesn't lose two hours opening the right ticket on a March Saturday.

Project capacity on demand

Hosted-tax cutovers, server retirements, M365 hardening, office moves, firewall refreshes — your IT person chooses what to keep and what to hand off, project by project.

WISP + § 314 program management

Quarterly security review, policy maintenance, qualified-individual artifacts, annual risk assessment, cyber-insurance attestation pack, tabletop exercises. The data security coordinator gets a real bench.

Documentation discipline

Shared documentation in your platform of choice — IT Glue, Hudu, SharePoint — kept current with every change. The firm owns it; we keep it accurate.

Local Proof

Built for the Phoenix Accounting Firms Reality

We work for your IT person, not over them

The relationship is built so your in-house lead stays the firm's IT voice with the managing partner and the data security coordinator role stays defensible.

Pre-built CPA-firm runbooks

Onboarding, offboarding, busy-season change freeze, hosted-env case escalation — we bring the templates; your team adapts them.

WISP and insurer attestation pack

We produce the artifact file every renewal so your IT person isn't writing it from scratch each year.

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FAQs

Co-Managed IT questions Phoenix accounting firms ask

No — and we'll put it in writing. The co-managed model only works if the firm keeps institutional knowledge in-house. If your IT person ever moves on, the arrangement can change; until then we're the bench, not the replacement.

Our SOC handles security events 24/7. After-hours operations issues (a Saturday tax-software outage, partner email outage, hosted-env login failure) route to our on-call engineer who responds in 15 minutes, in writing. Your IT person sets escalation rules — they can be paged on specific events or specifically not be paged.

Stays in-house — that's by design. The qualified-individual role under FTC § 314 should remain with the firm. We provide the artifact production, the operational controls, and the annual review work; the firm's coordinator owns the program.

Project capacity at MSP scale — a named PM, engineering bench, documentation, and closeout. Your in-house IT person chooses which projects to own and which to hand off. Most Phoenix firms hand us the multi-week ones (hosted-tax cutovers, firewall refreshes, office moves) and keep the high-trust short ones.

Per-user/per-month plus a flat platform fee for the tooling (EDR, SOC, backup, monitoring). It scales with the firm, not with how busy your IT person is in any given month. Projects are scoped separately as fixed-fee where possible.

Got an in-house IT person drowning in busy season at your Phoenix CPA firm? Let's talk for 15 minutes about a co-managed model that gives them the bench they need.

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Prevention-First IT

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